I have been playing this game for about 2 months now and I have 160 hours into multiplayer between the available modes. So, I think I can give a full honest opinion on it. I bought this game back in November on the 360 and later I bought an Xbox 1 on black friday and upgraded my disk. Overall, I have been pleased with the game as a whole, but I know I am in a small minority there. It has it's problems, but it's a solid entry in the series.

I think the biggest problem here was Infinity Ward tried to listen to too many people when they went out and designed Ghosts. It looks like they went through the message boards and other forms of feed back and they tried to please everybody which, was their first mistake. The company set out to build a game with a mix of features from different titles in the series. They suceeded in their attempt, but not everything works well together. They wanted the perks, player experience and feel of modern warfare 2. However, they wanted to keep the pick 10 system from black ops 2, address a lot of the issues that have plauged the game for a long time and keep everything in balance. They also released the title on 6 different platforms and tried to allow it to transition from the current to the next gen platforms as smoothly as possible. I think they did a pretty good job trying to accomplish all that, but not everybody agrees with me. Let me break it down for you.

The first thing they wanted to do was bring back the feel of modern warfare 2. They upped the weapon ranges and base damage just like that game had where everything kills very quickly. They brought back the most popular perks from that game, namely stopping power, danger close and one man army. However, they tried to do it in a way that kept the system balanced and kept them from being abused. Danger close is back, but it's too expensive to be pracitcal, stopping power takes the form of dead eye. It works but is too costly to use on most classes. One man army has been moved to a support kill streak. Namely the ammo crate, now you only get one reload per live and the weapon you draw is random, but it's still there.

They kept the pick 10 system from black ops 2 in a new layout and weighted the cost of perks to allow for better game balancing. This offers a consistent feel, but limits what loadouts a player can functionally create. The new system works, but it gives preference to certain types of builds and discourages players to experiment off the beaten path. Still there are pleanty of options available with a little creative thinking.

The next thing IW tried to do was fix the long laundry list of complaints they have been getting about aspects of this series for a long time. The first one was that players were complaining about too many hit markers and problems with the lag compensation. Well, IW eliminated theatre mode and increase the damage and range on most of the weapon classes. This lead to a very solid hit detection system, however it works a little too good and everybody dies very quickly. Another issue they tried to resolve was the ongoing complaint about quick scoping. Mathematically they have removed it from the game completely. You can still snipe quickly, but the traditional mechanic is gone. However, to compensate they gave the sniper rifles a large one hit kill area on the body and went with a large map design overall.

Another major problem they have addressed in the series deals with map and spawn design. One ongoing complaint is that a camper can lock down a 3rd of some the maps in past games thanks to the 3 lane design. There was also a lot of complaints about spawn trapping. IW designed its maps to be larger and more open along with a whole new spawn system. They have solved these two problem in their entirety. However, this design paradime has created several new ones of it's own. At laucn the spawns were broken and we ended up with a lot fo cheap kills spawning in front or behind another player on the opposite team. The new map designs do what they were meant to do, but they are too big and chaotic for what most COD players expected. This has also shifted the weapon dominace from SMGs and shotguns to ARs and some of the other longer range weapons.

Infinity ward tried to take the series in a whole new dircetion as well. They added the marksman rifles rather than having semi-auto assults by defualt or a low damage sniper rifle. They work, but players are tending towards the automatic weapons. They also introduced some new game designs in blitz and cranked. These modes are fun to play and suit the new map design very well. However, many players are sticking to the more traditional modes they are more comfortable with.

Overall, Infinity Ward tied to reinvent the COD experience and take the series in a whole new direction. I for one am very happy with the end result and the game as a whole. However, many traditional COD players are not as happy with the package because it's not what they are used to in a COD game. If you give the game some time and learn how to work the new system it's a lot of fun. But Infinity Ward may have tried to change too much too fast and please too many people. I applaud their creativity and willingness to take the risk. I do hope they listen to their fans and start to tweak things to a little more traditional direction. There is a lot of good things here and the series is heading in a very intersting direction. Let me know your thoughts and feelings on some of the issues discussed here.

The way they designed the maps are fine in my opinion but the mapdesigns itself are very bad. Most Maps are too big even for 9v9 and this makes the game feel very slow paced. They added areas to the maps were nobody goes to and are just a waste of memory. There is a lack of smaller/medium maps which is a problem because the majority of modes is 6v6 and there is only ONE 9v9 mode only on next gen. I hope the DLC has a lot more 6v6 maps (medium/small scaled) that will make the game more enjoyable for a lot of people. I enjoy Ghosts but the lack of good 6v6 maps is annoying even when I have an Xbox One. ALL MODES except ONE are 6v6 but the maps are very big and slow paced for these modes... I hope @InfinityWard and @Teanah make sure that they will fix this with some good medium and small scaled DLC maps for the 6v6 Gamemodes.

There is also a lack of Private Match options. Infected can't be customized in Private Match which kills the fun lobbies I had on MW3 in Private Match creating custom Infected loadouts with friends. I also miss the gamemodes like GunGame, One in the Chamber and All or Nothing. These modes were a lot of fun in MW3.

About the killtimes, I played some matches of Heavy Duty and I think Heavy Duty plays better than Core Ghosts. The killtimes in Ghosts are just too quick which makes people scared of moving and they will camp. There is also a very small chance to fight back or run away even a little bit. The MW2 killtimes were the best and I hope they increase the health in ALL GAMEMODES to the MW2 health so we will get more fastpaced gameplay. In MW2 we also had multiple big maps but they still were action packed because people moved around! The MW2 killtimes were perfect while the Ghosts killtimes are just too quick and feel like Hardcore. The hit detection is indeed very good and makes the game more skilled but the fast killtimes aren't right and should be changed! Nobody cares if the game is already released 80-90% of the players want MW2 killtimes instead of the Ghosts killtimes so they will only please a lot of us with it and will make the game much better because the pace of the matches will become faster!

Some Killstreaks feel kinda useless and underpowered and if they increase the killtimes (which almost all of us want) than they should buff some of the killstreaks to make them better. The Dog is very strong but I the problem of the dog is the silent killing of it and commando knife jumps.

Heavy Duty is double health and it shows the MW2/3 killtimes but they should make a new tab called Heavy Duty like Hardcore! Adding the favorite modes to it like TDM, Dom and Ground War and it will be much better because it isn't core. Snipers are useless in Heavy Duty ( ) but they should change all the killtimes to MW2 killtimes on every mode!

I agree with you on the time to kill issue, it happens too fast. It's another problem that came with the map design. This is mostly speculation on my part but it makes sense. If you look at black ops 2 and MW3 for example, most of the assult rifles start their damage drop some place between 15 and 20 meters. That is an average, there were some longer range ones in both games and some shorter ones. However, in ghost most assult rifles don't start their damage drop until 24 to 30 meters. This was done so that we didn't end up with a match full hit marker machines on the bigger maps.

However, in COD ghost most players are choosing map areas where they can force closer engagements. This is out of habit and comfort level. So, most of the gun fights in this game take place with the weapons doing their maximum damage. This leads to a faster TTK in most circmstances and makes the health seem too short. The 130 health in heavy duty mode eleviates this quite a bit. It's a good fix from IW without changing the core game modes for those who are happy with things they way they are.

They upped the weapon ranges and base damage just like that game had where everything kills very quickly.

False, the weapons are pretty much the same as before. Some of the ranges have been increased but only because of the map sizes. The base damage is pretty spot on to how it's always been. Some guns are just stronger and the shots-to-kill are are still a mix of 3-4-5 depending on range and aim. It only seems like it's faster to kill someone because the connection is actually good and you can kill people without having to shoot an additional 5 rounds to get 3 to register.

Another major problem they have addressed in the series deals with map and spawn design.

I feel as if IW foresaw complaints about the maps being too big and decided to implement a slightly less aggressive revenge spawn system. This back fired because IW didn't take the time to actually design spawn locations in the map. There's never, under any circumstances, a valid reason for being killed immediately after spawning in TDM. I have the entire map to spawn in and I get put 10yds from an enemy player?

Spawns need to be designed for defense and should never be out in the open between a couple a trees or in maze of rocks and decimated buildings where I spend a minute just trying to figure out where I am so the enemy can find me spinning in circles trying to get my barrings straight.

A better connection would make players feel that they KILL ENEMIES FAST and HAVE TIME TO REACT ON ENEMY GUNFIRE.

The opposite is true:

Players feel they need 5 hitmarkers to kill enemies when wielding 3 hit kill weapons, and feel that they die from one single shot.

This was also true in MW3, but not so much in Black Ops 2 -- where the problem was that what you did didn't matter half the time because of an uncanny long delay between actions and reactions, both when dealing and taking damage.

Black Ops 2:

You often had a 0.27 second delay from action to reaction when not hosting, on 4 bars (under 100 ping).

However -- you didn't die in one hit as often: Scenarios played out, even though you were already doomed because of the long time it took to get your actions to actually happen in the game world.

When an enemy had fired his gun, your fate was already sealed at the point that happened on your screen (because of the long delay between his actions and you seeing them play out) -- but at the least you could move and pretend to have a chance for 0.3 seconds before keeling over or watching him reload in frustration.

In Ghosts, the delay from shot fired to hit-detection isn't better than in BO2 -- but you die in what appears to be one hit more often. This reminds me of MW3: You could get killed by enemies when they fired their first bullet in some cases.

I am certain I have been killed by enemies who have not yet even rounded the corner on my screen when hosting, as well:

When notified that you're going to die, you die -- instead of the game letting you dream on a bit longer (firing phantom bullets and knifing with a phantom knife) before killing you.

Alternatively, IW-games don't sort out and differenciate gunshots within client updates, just letting guns hit twice at a time because of the low tick rate.

I fear, very much, that the latter is the reality:

The tick rate is so low that all guns firing faster than ~600 RPM fires two and two bullets in the actual game world.

I made a video on that matter in MW3: Getting killed in two hits from 3 hit kill weapons without taking headshots, uninjured, from what appears to be two and even three simultaneously fired rounds.

Keep in mind: This is softcore. Uninjured in all cases. (Damn you, 30 second video limit!)